I am truly sad to see this feature die. This was very useful when I couldn't get on to STO but needed to communicate with fleet members. Honestly, I haven't seen that many Gold Spammers in years. It's a shame it has to end this way.
This is a feature that enhances many peoples' gameplay, a feature that larger fleets and chat channels are absolutely dependent on, and terminating it demonstrates that Cryptic is shockingly out of touch with the way the players who spend money on their game play it.
Don't remove XMPP. Take it out of beta and monetize it instead. Charge $10 or $25 for access if you have to.
XMPP is already a paid feature. If reducing goldspam is their real goal, they should shut down the ingame mail system because that's what goldspammers use (I get a few spams per week, every week). I never had a single goldspam whisper in the last 6 years.
It's pretty typical in the business world to try to phrase actions that benefit the company itself while reducing the value to customers... as being a favour that is being done FOR the customers. You'll notice that there's no shortage of restaurants willing to stop using plastic straws "for the environment" (and to not have to pay for them or store them anymore)... or stores that will happily trade your money that can be used on anything for less useful money that can only be spent on certain things (gift cards). They're even proud to announce such additions to show you how much they care!
The XMPP thing is clearly not about gold spam given the context. People would have been unhappy to hear that the XMPP access was going away, but saying "we're closing it because it doesn't get used enough to justify the resources needed to operate it" would have been more straight up, and people wouldn't have gotten as irate.
It's pretty typical in the business world to try to phrase actions that benefit the company itself while reducing the value to customers... as being a favour that is being done FOR the customers. You'll notice that there's no shortage of restaurants willing to stop using plastic straws "for the environment" (and to not have to pay for them or store them anymore)... or stores that will happily trade your money that can be used on anything for less useful money that can only be spent on certain things (gift cards). They're even proud to announce such additions to show you how much they care!
The XMPP thing is clearly not about gold spam given the context. People would have been unhappy to hear that the XMPP access was going away, but saying "we're closing it because it doesn't get used enough to justify the resources needed to operate it" would have been more straight up, and people wouldn't have gotten as irate.
Re-read the announcement it is not just being closed down due to the gold spam in Cryptic's titles that have it. That is only one of the reasons for its closure. Thanks.
Removing XMPP is not discriminating against anyone, stop it.
They're not targeting people with disabilities, nor are they discriminating against them. Getting a law degree out of a cereal box doesn't make you a lawyer.
No but my boss is..(attorney general of state) since it is only way us visually impaired can "Read" chat ADA states they have to either remove chat for all or level the playing field
Removing XMPP is not discriminating against anyone, stop it.
They're not targeting people with disabilities, nor are they discriminating against them. Getting a law degree out of a cereal box doesn't make you a lawyer.
No but my boss is..(attorney general of state) since it is only way us visually impaired can "Read" chat ADA states they have to either remove chat for all or level the playing field
I really hope to all that is holy that they don't remove chat. You know this hurts many good players who use the chat to communicate right? Yeah there are trolls yes. But the fact of it is. It doesn't have to go so far. I get it I do. But there is other ways to communicate. Many guilds for example have a discord. So your not completely cut off there is voice chat. I mean these games mmos can't be expected to be totally blind friendly simple reason is if they were then they wouldn't be as good as they are. I mean the coding for this has got to be complex. As for Chat if I lose my ability to roleplay in local or emote I'd be very unhappy. But I understand how it is for you to lose your ability to do so and hope there is a happy solution for you.
If you want them to do something let them know they actually have a means to email devs you know maybe you can talk with them directly. See what can be done to help those in your shoes. Many ways to deal with this. Many ways to adjust to it. If you could see barely but still able to see it. Yeah its really hard to play mmos or any game without sight. Yeah there is games out there that are blind friendly. But Stos chat system is older then the law that says they have to be blind friendly. I don't know if it would apply to them if they can prove that point. I mean you could even use a tv system or flat screen and hook up the computer or your comp to that if you hvae good enough vision to see a tv screen but If you have to play on a much larger screen. Then that is another solution. But if your vision is close to where your nearly completely blind well. I don't know what do there. I mean in high school I had to go get glasses and well my far away vision was poor. After that I wore them all the time. I mean and this didn't help my vision because my vision is good close up but not far away so I lost even more far away vision. But I don't wear my glasses really unless I go out now because of this. My vision hasn't gotten to much worse after stopping wearing my glasses when gaming. So I do understand your plight. But going to get big daddy law isn't the solution. Getting the devs to understand is and they are open to being emailed at least some of them I think. So I'd talk with them. See what can be done for you and others in your situation. Can even pm them on the forums.
But yeah it never hurts to talk with them and see what can be done.
Removing XMPP is not discriminating against anyone, stop it.
They're not targeting people with disabilities, nor are they discriminating against them. Getting a law degree out of a cereal box doesn't make you a lawyer.
No but my boss is..(attorney general of state) since it is only way us visually impaired can "Read" chat ADA states they have to either remove chat for all or level the playing field
Going to go back to a previous statement of mine...
WoW doesn't support screen readers. Apparently there were some plugins, but they seem dead and are third party anyway.
Neither does SWTOR, nor Guild Wars, from what I can find.
They all have chat, and at least WoW and SWTOR have years old forum threads asking for it, with silence. If big companies don't even do anything, there's no way a little guy, like Cryptic, will. The cost to implement it is too great, and yes, the only that would happen is chat would be removed for everyone. That in turn will literally kill the game. Games don't have controls, or window handles, like literally everything else that's not a game does, which is how screen readers can find the information to read.
What you can do though, is copy the text from the chat window and paste it into notepad. Ctrl-A even works to highlight it all.
While frustrating, it's not impossible to get chat read aloud.
Most games don't even support color blind mode, and that's actually fairly trivial to implement code-wise, compared to screen reader support.
Personally, it seems things are changing, as some games have support now for a few accessibility options such as color blind mode, and that's a good thing.
However since chat is not a "required feature" to enjoy all the content in the game, I very much doubt anything will change.
Well, this thread is going nowhere good. Everyone can still read the announcement linked in the OP. /Thread
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Comments
XMPP is already a paid feature. If reducing goldspam is their real goal, they should shut down the ingame mail system because that's what goldspammers use (I get a few spams per week, every week). I never had a single goldspam whisper in the last 6 years.
The XMPP thing is clearly not about gold spam given the context. People would have been unhappy to hear that the XMPP access was going away, but saying "we're closing it because it doesn't get used enough to justify the resources needed to operate it" would have been more straight up, and people wouldn't have gotten as irate.
Re-read the announcement it is not just being closed down due to the gold spam in Cryptic's titles that have it. That is only one of the reasons for its closure. Thanks.
No but my boss is..(attorney general of state) since it is only way us visually impaired can "Read" chat ADA states they have to either remove chat for all or level the playing field
I really hope to all that is holy that they don't remove chat. You know this hurts many good players who use the chat to communicate right? Yeah there are trolls yes. But the fact of it is. It doesn't have to go so far. I get it I do. But there is other ways to communicate. Many guilds for example have a discord. So your not completely cut off there is voice chat. I mean these games mmos can't be expected to be totally blind friendly simple reason is if they were then they wouldn't be as good as they are. I mean the coding for this has got to be complex. As for Chat if I lose my ability to roleplay in local or emote I'd be very unhappy. But I understand how it is for you to lose your ability to do so and hope there is a happy solution for you.
If you want them to do something let them know they actually have a means to email devs you know maybe you can talk with them directly. See what can be done to help those in your shoes. Many ways to deal with this. Many ways to adjust to it. If you could see barely but still able to see it. Yeah its really hard to play mmos or any game without sight. Yeah there is games out there that are blind friendly. But Stos chat system is older then the law that says they have to be blind friendly. I don't know if it would apply to them if they can prove that point. I mean you could even use a tv system or flat screen and hook up the computer or your comp to that if you hvae good enough vision to see a tv screen but If you have to play on a much larger screen. Then that is another solution. But if your vision is close to where your nearly completely blind well. I don't know what do there. I mean in high school I had to go get glasses and well my far away vision was poor. After that I wore them all the time. I mean and this didn't help my vision because my vision is good close up but not far away so I lost even more far away vision. But I don't wear my glasses really unless I go out now because of this. My vision hasn't gotten to much worse after stopping wearing my glasses when gaming. So I do understand your plight. But going to get big daddy law isn't the solution. Getting the devs to understand is and they are open to being emailed at least some of them I think. So I'd talk with them. See what can be done for you and others in your situation. Can even pm them on the forums.
But yeah it never hurts to talk with them and see what can be done.
Going to go back to a previous statement of mine...
WoW doesn't support screen readers. Apparently there were some plugins, but they seem dead and are third party anyway.
Neither does SWTOR, nor Guild Wars, from what I can find.
They all have chat, and at least WoW and SWTOR have years old forum threads asking for it, with silence. If big companies don't even do anything, there's no way a little guy, like Cryptic, will. The cost to implement it is too great, and yes, the only that would happen is chat would be removed for everyone. That in turn will literally kill the game. Games don't have controls, or window handles, like literally everything else that's not a game does, which is how screen readers can find the information to read.
What you can do though, is copy the text from the chat window and paste it into notepad. Ctrl-A even works to highlight it all.
While frustrating, it's not impossible to get chat read aloud.
Most games don't even support color blind mode, and that's actually fairly trivial to implement code-wise, compared to screen reader support.
Personally, it seems things are changing, as some games have support now for a few accessibility options such as color blind mode, and that's a good thing.
However since chat is not a "required feature" to enjoy all the content in the game, I very much doubt anything will change.
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